Catholics were cast as a fifth column in English national consciousness.

Evidence

The English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were struggling more or less continuously against rival Catholic powers or their own pro-Catholic monarchs. The Roman pontiff loomed in English eyes as the great foreign tyrant, menacing the nation and its constitution; his followers had the aspect of a fifth column. By 1679 Titus Oates could plunge the whole kingdom into hysteria with crazy charges of a subversive Catholic conspiracy. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 33

Categorization

• CANDY: Titus Oates’ 1679 conspiracy hysteria is a vivid, tweetable historical anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: Elizabeth’s reign saw the emergence of a national consciousness in England. — Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking…, 918; English national identity partly formed against an imagined Catholic fifth column — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 33

Broader Connections

• Elizabeth’s reign saw the emergence of a national consciousness in England. #complicates (0.80) — Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking…, 918